The popularity of ceiling fans has increased tremendously in recent years. Today, consumers having a wide range of tastes and needs often purchase numerous ceiling fans for a single home or business to enhance the decor of the environment and to provide an extremely effective means to conserve the energy required to heat and cool the environment. As a result, the traditional ceiling fan market has evolved from a few basis models into a choice of hundreds of different fans. Further, due to their economic power, large retail chains often are in a position to require manufacturers to provide new designs for ceiling fans on an exclusive basis or as private label products in order to distinguish the configuration, style or appearance of their ceiling fans from the products offered by their competitors, even though the fans may be made by the same manufacturer. Thus, in response to evolving consumer tastes and demands and competitive pressures within the ceiling fan market, ceiling fan manufacturers are compelled to continuously create entirely new fan designs or lines of fan products in order to provided a variety of ceiling fans which are clearly distinguishable both from other fans in their own product lines and from ceiling fan products marketed by other competing manufacturers.
Whenever the design of a ceiling fan is changed, whether due to a change in consumer preferences or as an accommodation to a retail chain or other outlet, new parts and assembly drawings must be created, and different tooling must be produced for each of the new parts of the fan. The new parts then must be manufactured and inventoried. In addition, different packing materials must be developed and produced for each new fan design, including different size packing cartons, different cushion material customized to fit the cartons and the parts, different ornamentation for the cartons, and different arrangement of cartons for shipment on a pallet. The production of many different lines of ceiling fan products also substantially increases the cost of raw materials, labor, material, handling and inventory for a manufacturer. Further, it often is necessary to provide a separate packing line to package the final product after it comes off of the assembly line. Moreover, typically a production line must be completely shut down in order to incorporate adjustments for a new ceiling fan design.
The few prior efforts to produce a ceiling fan having interchangeable components typically utilize a limited number of parts for only one of the components of the ceiling fan. However, these efforts to not significantly reduce manufacturing costs or allow the production of a large variety of uniquely different fan configurations, styles or appearances.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,151,011 discloses only non-modular interchangeable matched top and bottom globe-like covers for a lighted ceiling fan in which each cover is manufactured as a complete unit. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,441,387 and 5,503,524 disclose ceiling fan motor housings configured to receive different inserts which alter only the decorative pattern on the housing. Clearly, none of these prior efforts provide a system in which a wide variety of ceiling fans having uniquely differentiating styles, configurations, and appearances can be produced from a single standardized ceiling fan assembly, while substantially reducing the cost to the manufacturer.